


Honor Their Mistakes (Everybody Makes)

by Cerusee



Series: Posthumous Dialogues [2]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Reconciliation, fugue state, jason says "fuck" a lot, just an fyi, no hugging, shoulders are clasped in a manly fashion, some learning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 14:32:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11015349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerusee/pseuds/Cerusee
Summary: After his conversation with Alfred, Bruce apologizes to Jason.  Well.  He's trying.





	Honor Their Mistakes (Everybody Makes)

**Author's Note:**

> Bruce and Jason's talk, by popular demand. And by popular, I mean, two people asked about this at the end of [Scheherazade](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10718790/chapters/23748249) and I couldn't stop thinking about it. So here you go.

It had taken weeks of stakeouts, but he’d finally located his target.  Bruce took a deep breath and steadied himself for the confrontation to come.  
   
He walked into the laundromat, completely deserted except for one Jason Todd, hauling laundry out of a dryer.  
   
“Bruce,” Jason said, nodding at him while tossing an armful of clothes onto the counter.  “How the hell’d you find me?  I’m avoiding you.”  
   
“I noticed,”  Bruce said, dryly.  “It was mostly an educated guess.  Alfred always does laundry on Saturdays.  I thought you might, too.  And Barbara was fairly certain you have a safehouse somewhere in this neighborhood.”  
   
“All righty, then.”  Jason looked amused by this piece of detective work.   “Why are you stalking me?”  
   
“Can we talk?”  
   
“Eh.”  Jason, pulled a face, sorting socks.  “I feel like lately I've been doing nothing _but_ talk.”  
   
Bruce cleared his throat.  “It’s been brought to my attention,” he said, “that I have been unfair to you.”  
   
Jason eyed Bruce with skepticism.  “You’re gonna have to narrow it down for me, old man.”  He reached back into the dryer to pull out a tangle of Henley shirts.  
   
“About your moth—”  Jason’s head snapped towards him, and Bruce instantly changed course.  “Sheila.  About Sheila.  And the events of the warehouse, the circumstances of your—” Bruce glanced around, but the laundromat was still empty but for the two of them.  He dropped his voice anyway.  “Death.”  
   
“Oh, just _all of that_.”  
   
Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose.  “I’m _trying_ , Jason.”  
   
Jason rolled his eyes dramatically.  “Fine.  Keep going, then.  And while you’re at it, why don't you try to fold some shirts.”  He thrust them at Bruce.  
   
Bruce took them.  “I hadn’t known.  About how she betrayed you, led you to the Joker.  Alfred told me.”  
   
“Yeah…”  Jason paused in his folding, and leaned back against the counter.  “I know you just assumed all this time that I decided to face the Joker all on my own, after I promised you I wouldn’t.  That you think it was my recklessness, my bad judgment that got me killed, and took _my mother_ out with me.”    
   
Bruce flinched.  
   
Jason laughed mirthlessly as he shook out a pair of jeans.  “S’ok.  I knew.  Damian was happy enough to pass along some of your editorial commentary on the subject of me, back when we first met.  I know perfectly well what you think of me, and I knew it even before you said it to my face.”  
   
“Jason, I’m sorry.  I am.  I know how much it must have hurt to hear me say those things—”  
   
“You don’t know shit,” Jason said, cutting him off.  “If someone you—you looked up to told you it was _your_ fault your parents died, that that was on you, maybe you’d have the first clue.”  
   
Bruce wanted nothing more than to flee the building, flee Jason’s anger, but the thought of Alfred’s disappointment kept him in place.  Jason had never invoked the memory of Bruce’s parents’ deaths as a weapon before.   _Now you know what that feels like_ , his guilty conscience sing-songed at him.  “Maybe this isn’t the best place to have this conversation,” he said, after a moment.  “We’re a little public here.”  
   
“You were the one who crashed laundry day,” Jason said.  But he started stuffing his clothes into a collapsible laundry hamper.  He jerked his head.  “C’mon.”  
   
Bruce trailed after Jason out of the laundromat.  “We’re going to your safehouse?”  
   
“What the hell, it’s already compromised,” Jason said.  “Cass and Steph keep dropping by all unannounced.”  
   
Bruce bit back a laugh.  “That would explain why Barbara was so sure it was here.”  
   
“She has this place in her fucking Rolodex.  She sold me out because she didn’t get invited to our last pizza night,” Jason said.  “Probably.”  
   
“She didn’t?”  Bruce was genuinely curious.  “Why not?”  
   
“The last time I let her place an order, she didn’t get any pepperoni.”  Jason cast him a look over his shoulder.  “A man has to take a stand for what he believes in.”  
   
Bruce held back a smile.  
   
He followed Jason for a few blocks until they reached the door of a multi-story building.  Jason shoved the laundry bag into Bruce’s arms while he pulled his keys out of his pocket.  
   
They were on the elevator when something Jason had said earlier finally penetrated.  “Do you?”  
   
Jason looked at him blankly, as they stepped off.  “Do I what?”  He unlocked his apartment door, and Bruce followed Jason in.  
   
“Do you still look up to me?”  Bruce dropped the bag on the floor.  “After everything?”  
   
Jason rolled his eyes again.  “Make yourself useful and put the fucking kettle on.”  He snatched up the laundry bag and disappeared through a doorway.    
   
Bruce surveyed what he could see of the apartment, mostly out of habit.  Spare, not quite spartan.  There were no decorations, but there were signs of life—trash in the wastebaskets; pre-packaged food in the freezer.  Soy sauce and instant oatmeal and microwave popcorn in a cupboard.  He took the empty kettle from the stove, filled it with water and set it to heat.  
   
Just before the kettle started to shriek, Jason suddenly reappeared.  He pulled a teapot out of a cupboard and teabags from somewhere Bruce hadn’t noted and poured the kettle’s contents into the teapot.  The room flooded with fragrant steam.  
   
“I’ll tell you what, Bruce,” Jason said.  “I’ll answer your dumbass question if you answer mine first.”  
   
Bruce backed out of the kitchen, casting an eye about for cups.  He found a couple, haphazardly strewn about the room, but clean-looking, and held them out for Jason’s approval.  Jason poured, fished the teabags out of the pot and threw them into the sink, and then set the pot down.  
   
Jason took his mug from Bruce, sat down, and blew on his tea.  
   
He looked at him.  “When exactly did you lose faith in me, Bruce?  What did I do, to make you think so _little_ of me?”  Bitterness crept into his voice like the stench of a rotting walnut.  “All this shit I pulled since I came back,” Jason waved his non-tea arm expansively over the table between them.  “I get how...I mean that was half the _point_.  I _wanted_ to break things between us forever.  That’s on me.  But what was it about me back then that suddenly had you thinking the worst of me?  Thinking that I killed Felipe— _which I fucking didn’t, Bruce!_ —you were ready to take Robin away from me, when Robin was _everything_ to me…” Jason’s voice broke, anger no longer sufficient to mask raw pain.  “How could you do that to me?”  
   
Bruce half-started out of his chair, than sat down again, unsure if Jason would welcome his touch.  He clamped his hand around his tea.  The cup burned his palm.  
   
“D’you know,” Jason continued, and Bruce thought he heard tears in his voice, “When Talia told me about Tim, my first thought was, ‘ _He must have been so relieved _.’  To get a good one this time.”__  
   
“No.  No.  Never,” Bruce said immediately.  He shoved his mug to the side and fixed Jason with his eyes.  “I swear to you Jay, it wasn’t like that at all.  I never planned to take on another partner.  You were—you were supposed to be the last.  I couldn’t take any more chances, I couldn’t lose anyone else.  Not after you.”  
   
Jason made a small, croaking sound in his throat.  “ _Then what the fuck happened?_ ”    
   
Bruce glanced down; Jason’s nails were digging into the table.  
   
He sighed.  “Tim...more or less foisted himself on me.  And once he was there, I could see how much I needed someone.”  He swallowed.  “Losing you destabilized me, Jason.  Catastrophically.  I was out of control, and I didn’t know how badly until he pulled me back from the brink.”    
   
Bruce reached across the table and brushed his knuckles across Jason’s.  Fast as lightning, Jason’s hand snapped up to grasp his wrist, and yanked his arm up and as far back as Jason could manage, sitting down.    
   
For a moment, neither of them breathed.  
   
Jason slowly unwrapped his hand from Bruce’s wrist, finger by finger.  Bruce retracted his arm.  
   
“You can ask Alfred or Jim for stories about what I was like at the time, if you want,” Bruce said. “They’re not pretty.”  
   
Jason took several deep breaths.  He said, in a reflective tone, “He’s a pushy little shit, isn’t he.”  
   
Bruce flexed his wrist—undamaged—and fought back a smile.  “It’s not my preferred phrasing...but yes.”  
   
“You haven’t answered my question.”  
   
Bruce shook his head.  “No.  I’m sorry.  I’ve never let myself think very hard about this.  It was too painful.”  
   
“I fucking bet,” Jason said, savagely.  He glanced into his mug, wrinkled his nose, and refilled it from the pot.  
   
“Jason,” Bruce said as seriously as he could, “I’m not trying to deflect here, or to minimize what you’ve been through.  Alfred told me enough...I know you’ve had far more of your share of pain and tragedy in your life, and you’re still so _young_ —my God.  I know that you’ve suffered in ways I can’t fully understand.  But please believe me when I tell you that losing a child is a special kind of hell, and I hope that you are never, ever in a position to experience it yourself.”  
   
“Jesus,” Jason said, taken aback by Bruce’s intensity. “I feel like I should be—I don’t know, apologizing to you for putting you through that.”  
   
“ _No_.” Bruce replied instantly.  He stood up, coming around the table and reaching out to put his hands on Jason’s shoulders.  Jason flinched at the touch, ever so slightly, and then relaxed.   “No.  That’s not what I’m—we’re— _I’m_ not going to fall back into that kind of thinking.”  Jason’s head fell back, looking up at Bruce.  “It wasn’t your fault, I know it wasn’t your fault.  Jay, I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever said or done to suggest that it was.”  He squeezed Jason’s shoulders, and Jason’s eyes closed for a moment.  “I’m ashamed of myself, deeply, for ever trying to hide from the pain of your loss by obsessing about what you could have or should have done to avert it.  I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry...”  
   
Jason’s hand crept up to clasp one of Bruce’s.  He nodded slightly.  “Okay.”  
   
Bruce swept his hands up along Jason’s neck and head, giving in to the impulse to tousle Jason’s hair for just a few seconds before he dropped his arms.  He sat back down again.  It took Jason a moment to open his eyes and pretend it hadn’t happened.  
   
Bruce said, “It wasn’t any one thing you did.  It’s just that...you were growing up, into a different kind of man than Dick—don’t give me that look, I’ve always known you were different from Dick, it’s not an insult—and I was, well, I was unprepared.  Your childhood experiences were manifesting in ways I didn’t know how to anticipate or deal with.  I was in over my head, frankly.  I felt like I was losing control of you, and it’s obvious to me now that I handled that badly.  Very badly.”    
   
Jason gave him a look.    
   
“Very, very badly.”  
   
Jason bent over his tea and snorted.  “‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ huh?”  
   
“It’s true, Jay.”  
   
“And where the hell did all this insight come from?”  
   
Bruce managed a pained smile.  “I’ve been thinking about it, ever since Alfred—how should I put it?—schooled me.”  
   
Jason laughed.  “Oh to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.  Actually, you know what, forget I said that. I probably would have hated it.  How much did he pass along, by the way?” Jason asked.  “I wondered how much of that was going to make its way back to you.”  
   
“Not all of it, I think.  Enough.  Enough of what mattered.”  
   
“Huh.”  
   
“Have I answered your question?”  
   
“Mmm.”  Jason rocked his mug back and forth slightly on the table.  “Enough.  I guess.”  
   
“What about mine?  Do you still—I guess the better question is, does my opinion still matter to you?”  
   
“Don't be a fucking idiot, Bruce.”  Jason laughed, and this time Bruce could hear actual humor in it, angered, but real.  “Of course it does.  It always did.  Even when I was furious with you.  Even when I hated you.  When I wanted you _dead_ , and did my fucking best to make that happen—did Alfred tell you _that_?”  Jason’s voice took on an eerie tone.  “That years ago, one night, you came oh-so-close to meeting your maker, because of me?  Stealth ambush.  Not like when I was putting on a big show to get your attention, that was later.  This one, you would not have seen coming.  And it would have worked, if I’d gone through with it.”  
   
Bruce shook his head in mute horror, and wondered which of them Alfred had been trying to protect by withholding that.  Both, probably.  How like Alfred, to try to spare them the hurt; how like Jason to insist on confronting it head-on.  He never did back down from a fight.  
   
“Even then,” Jason said.  “I cared.  I still wanted.  If I hadn't, maybe I could have walked away from the literal flaming wreckage of my old life and started a new one, somewhere far away from you, far from Gotham.  There are other cities to save.  But I couldn't.  Leave you behind.  If I couldn't have my place in my old life back—and I knew I couldn't—I'd find a new role in yours.  And I'd make damn sure you could never forget me.  God, Bruce,” Jason said, softly. “Your opinion of me has always been the most important thing in the world.  How could you not know that?”  
   
How is it, Bruce wondered, that this boy, this man sitting in front of him, the one who’d always had the power to break him, had always been equally vulnerable to Bruce in turn?  
   
Such a terrible mystery, love.  
   
“I don’t know,” he said, finally.  “So much of the time, it felt like you weren’t listening to me.”  He clutched his cooling mug against himself, for comfort.  
   
“I hung on your every word,” Jason said, sounding wounded.  “I fucking _worshipped_ you.”  
   
“Yes, but you also _argued_ with me, all the time.”  Jason opened his mouth, and Bruce held up a hand to forestall him.  “It’s not a bad thing.  Mostly.  I’m aware...that I need people to challenge me, to second-guess me, even if I hate it.  But you were so young, and I just wanted to protect you.  I worried all the time—and then…”  
   
“...I died,” Jason finished for him.  “Fulfilling all your worst fears.”  
   
“I needed to give myself a reason for why,” Bruce said. His voice had gone raw somehow.  His hands spasmed around—was that the mug of tea Jason had given him?  He wasn’t sure.  “Something to give me a sense of control, a way to stop it from happening ever again.”  He let one hand fall onto the table, just make sure it was still there.  
   
It was still there.  His other hand was still clutching a warm mug of Jason’s tea (something oolong); he was sitting at the table in Jason’s fifth-favorite safehouse; Jason was in the room.  Jason would help him if he needed it.  Everything was all right.  
   
“Fucking control freak,” Jason said.  He either hadn’t noticed Bruce’s momentary break, or was pretending not to.  “I get it, though.  I do it too.  Everybody does it.”  
   
Bruce fought his way through the fog.  He’d done this a thousand times before.  He focused on the feeling of regret, ignored the screaming _why_ of it.  “You’re still mad at me though.”  
   
“ _Shyeah_.  You hurt my feelings.”    
   
If that wasn’t the understatement of a lifetime.    
   
Bruce blinked rapidly.  The world was starting to clear again.  And Jason was still there, across the table, annoyed.  Obviously concerned.  Alive.  
   
_Alive._  
   
Alive, thank God, but there was nowhere for Bruce to hide from him.  Not anymore.  
   
Somehow, he managed, “Jason, I don’t expect you to forgive me right away.  If you ever do.  But Alfred made it clear that I owed you an apology, so...I’m apologizing.”  
   
“You’re a fucking mess, but whatever.  Fine,” Jason huffed.  “Out of curiousity, would you have apologized if Alf hadn’t told you to?”  
   
The fog was mostly lifted.  Bruce snorted into his tea.  “Hell, I don’t know, son.  You know I’m terrible at this.”  
   
Jason grinned in spite of himself.  “You used to be better at it.”  The smile slipped off his face.  “Losing me really did fuck you up good, didn’t it.”  
   
_When I can look at your face without studying it for the test of loss—_  
   
“More than you’ll ever know,” Bruce said quietly.  
   
“I feel sorry for the kids,” Jason said, after a pause.  His voice was wistful.  “They’ll never know you like I knew you.”  
   
“I don’t think so,” Bruce said.  “No.  I’ve changed.  Not for the better, I know.  Even now that I have you back, it’s never going to be like it was.  I wish it could be, I do.  I don’t think it can.”  
   
“I guess not,” Jason said.  His index finger traced looping rhythms around the rim of his mug.  
   
They sat in meditative silence for a couple of minutes.  
   
“Look,” Jason said, “I’m not saying that I forgive you, Bruce.  Not yet.  But I’m going to try.  Okay?  Because I think that I want to.”  
   
Bruce tried not to let the sudden spark of hope he felt in his chest show on his face.  He probably failed.  He didn’t really care.  “Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "No One Is Alone" in Sondheim's Into The Woods. Fun fact: this was the original title of ["This Place We Built With Grace and Guilt"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10454130). I changed it because I didn't want to have two stories in a row with parentheses in the title. Having safely built up a buffer of two parentheses-free story titles, I felt comfortable using it for this one, especially because this is basically the same story as that one, except that Jason is awake for this one and therefore has many more opportunities to say "fuck".
> 
> Thanks to audreycritter for beta’ing.


End file.
